February 19, 2004

IMMORAL EQUIVALENCE

The increasingly creepy Richard Neville has posted this picture - supposedly of the bombing of the Baghdad suburb of Shua’le - with the caption "9,500 Iraqi civilians killed; John Howard has 'no regrets'".

I remembered seeing this picture before: the child on the left is an Israeli, who was badly injured when some Palestinian scumbag blew up a bus in Jerusalem. One of a long line of similar atrocities Richard has little interest in, except where the pics of Jewish victims of Islamic terror can be used as fake pictures of American terror.

UPDATE. Scroll down far enough on Neville’s site and you’ll find this:

APOLOGY & EXPLANATION. When the above journal entry was first posted, it included an image which I mistakenly took to that of a scene from Baghdad. In fact, it depicted an Israeli girl who was injured in the bombing of a bus carrying Jewish families home from prayer at the the Western Wall in August of 2003. More than 20 people were killed, and dozens more injured. I apologise for this stupid mistake and the distress it may have cause. The image was replaced as soon as the error was drawn to my attention.

And apologies from me for not noting this earlier -- although I’ve got no idea exactly when it was posted.

Posted by Tim Blair at February 19, 2004 01:49 AM

Comments

Richard helps people create tools and techniques for decoding the future and to read its footprints in the sand.

Actually, he replaced it after I read Tex's post and emailed him expressing my disgust with his use of this photo. Here's the correspondence, his reply first, and my original second:

Dear Garry Stockton, It was a stupid mistake of mine, having found the image on Google under the heading Baghdad Explosions. There was no malice intended and the image was changed the minute the mistake was discovered. I apologise for any distress causedR and appreciate the trouble you took to bring it to my attention, RN

On 16/2/04 3:09 PM, "Swingmando@aol.com" wrote:

I take great exception to your use of photos from a Palestinian suicide bombing, and its young Israeli victim, and presenting it-falsely and misleadingly-as that of an alleged bombing incident in Iraq.

Given your apparent political persuasion, and given that you frequently accuse the elected executives of both your and my governments of lying and deception, precisely how do you justify your own apparent exercise in mendacity and prevarication? Do you somehow claim either innocence, or perhaps ignorance? Frankly, I find no basis upon which to even begin to believe the first explanation; sadly, given the lack of any accuracy or even any attempt at evidencing a familiarity with reality that is apparent in my perusal of other screeds on your site, the second seems far more likely to be the case.

I take no exception with your right to disagree with the powers that be; frankly, I often do, and encourage skepticism toward all who represent the state; however, I suggest that it might be quite beneficial for you, personally, to seek professional help and possible medication in order to come to grips with your obvious delusional state; perhaps that might even give you a leg up on becoming somewhat less of a liar.

One can always hope.

Sincerely, and with very low regard,
Garry Stockton

I'm afraid he should be accorded some credit for having the ability to express shame; however, his ability to use a simple tool such as Google seems a little wanting, and his sincerity should be subject to some doubt; and his ability to understand scorn and disdain certainly seem lacking.

Kudos to Tex, indeed; and thank you, Tim, for pointing me in Tex's direction in the first place-regular reading of the two of you has given me much more confidence in the sanity of those from Oz-certainly Neville provides nothing to support such a supposition.

If Richard was a little more observant, he would have noticed that the attire of the man was not common among the rescue personnel in Baghdad at the time. He has no facial hair (in Iraq, a mustache is the social feature indicating strength and other things) and he's wearing gloves (doubtful iraqi's rescue crew would have had the money for gloves). Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like the area in the picture is lit up by artifical lights suggesting it was night time. I caught those features at first glance.

If Richard did indeed pull this off of google and mistook it for Iraq, then I don't think I would trust his analysis.

Typical filty commie tosser if ever I saw one!How dare he show the scummy muzzie (Palestine does not exist, except for in the state of Texas)looking as though they were "the victims". No other race in the world is as filthy or warped as islam.

Why is Commie Richie using a capitalist tool like Google anyways? Doesn't he know it's just a product of the dialectical hegemonic discourse of the ruling classes over the cybertronically impaired working classes? Did he expect that a notorious machination of the military-industrial-prison-media complex would produce ACCURATE results?

Commie Richie needs to be sent to re-education camp as soon as possible.

I can't believe I'm defending Richard Neville, but I do think that Chris Josephson's research exonerates him to at least a certain degree, moreso than Tex gives him credit. Of course, if he was more informed or a more careful observer, he wouldn't have made the mistake, but seeing as how it was attached to an article about Baghdad, it's quite a bit more understandable.

Wow. I still can't believe I'm defending him. But integrity is integrity, and I gotta preserve mine by calling it like I see it. I think one thing he should be zinged for is not offering any sort of note or correction on his blog. I'm always uncomfortable with the Orwellian style of blog editing.

Reading further, Richard tries to use Google again. A search for "World Social Forum" returns 183,000 results (not "about 5 and a half million" as he claims). I imagine that he forgot to use the quotes - a search on the words without quotes returns 5,040,000 (closer to 5 million than 5 1/2 ...).

A few years ago the esteemed NY Times ran a picture of an angry Israeli police officer standing over a bloody Palestinian. I do not recall the caption exactly, but it ran something like, "Palestinian man hurt by Israeli police action."

A few weeks later a letter to the editor was published from the father of the man writing from Brooklyn. That's right the bloody man, identified as a Palestinian, was an American of Jewish descent studying in Israel.

The charged-up policeman had just driven off a crowd of Palestinians that had captured the wayward American and were beating him mercilessly. I suspect, as with nearly all letters that put leftist publishers/editors to shame that the letter was sent off the day the 'mistake' appeared, but didn't appear until weeks later after 99.99% of readers had disposed of the edition containing the 'error.'

That, Jericho, takes the breath away. The next time, for example, a small plane crash with only white anglo-saxons and/or jews aboard crashes in U.S.,or O.z, the headlines will read: IDF shoot down palestininan diplomats. Seems plausible.